A Prison Interlude
by Julie S
Summary: Sometimes companions need to be rescued. Sometimes, they don’t deserve rescuing. And sometimes they just don’t want to be rescued.


"One day, I'll meet someone who gets the whole 'don't wander off' thing," the Doctor muttered to himself, prompting the TARDIS screen.

When Jack had mentioned the planet Aerith that morning, and described the winter festival that happened every winter for six centuries until the dictatorship, Rose had begged to go.

Jack, too, had said he'd love to visit again.

He fed the coordinates, ignoring the feeling of unease in the back of his head, as the humans looked for warm clothes in the wardrobe. Jack had donned a Royal Air Force greatcoat, an almost exact copy of the one he'd lost in the 1940s, while Rose, as was her habit, probably carefully examined every rack. In the end, she settled for a fur-lined white coat over the black dress that he recognised as the same one that had been lying folded neatly over a chair since she had left it there, the day they had first visited Cardiff.

It should have been magnificent: a twinkling parade of ice and snow sculptures, costumed crowds, ice rinks, snowball fights, and of course, the delicious food of the culture.

Instead, the TARDIS had miscalculated the date and landed them in the middle of the Xan Xhio terror, and an hour past curfew.

He was locking the TARDIS when the two wandered off. He'd heard Rose singing around the street corner, and Jack's echoing laugh.

When he rounded the corner, the last thing he saw was guards leading them away, cuffed.

Humans.

* * *

Rose sat on the wooden bench in their cell, and stared at the floor. "Fancy that. We set out to visit a festival that went on for 600 years without anything ever going wrong, and here we are, in a dungeon."

Jack laughed. "Yeah. But hey, it's all part of the adventure." He left the door, against which he had been leaning, trying to listen beyond it, and moved to sit next to her. "At least we haven't been separated."

"Thank god," she replied, and leaned against him almost instinctively at the thought.

Not that she had never found herself in a dungeon or prison cell alone, in all her time with the Doctor, but not one of those memories was a pleasant one.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders protectively and she leaned her head on his shoulder. "Think the Doctor will be here soon?"

"He'll be breaking through this door in a few minutes. You'll see." She could hear him smiling without looking up. It did seem like they were becoming more efficient in breaking their friends out of various imprisonment facilities.

"Yeah, hope he doesn't run into any of those guards himself."

Jack didn't reply.

* * *

It wasn't hard to figure out where the only prison in the city was.

It also wasn't hard to figure out that the best way to rescue his companions was to wait until dawn, when the curfew was lifted, and there were slightly fewer guards out on the streets. Not to mention he wouldn't be arrested on sight.

Having a few hours to kill, he turned to the TARDIS library and picked out several tomes of Aerith's history.

Under "Prisons", he found that prisoners were rarely executed before at least a few days after their arrest, or treated with violence. That was good. He felt slightly less guilty for having to let Rose and Jack wait for hours.

Under "Xan Xhio", he found that the dictatorship was supposed to last forty years more, which meant he could not change history today. Pity, that was, but at least it meant a quicker escape – he hoped.

* * *

Rose had been the first to remove her coat when she started sweating, and Jack was not far behind. The coats lay together on the edge of the bench, where the two were still sitting an hour after they had been brought to the cell.

"Wonder what my mum would say if she knew how many times I've been arrested now. Lucky none of this goes on my official record."

Jack laughed. "I have quite a few arrests on my official record, too."

"So you've always been this bold and daring?" she asked, with her mischievous grin.

"Not always. I'm sure I wasn't before I learned how to walk… but then everything went downhill."

They both laughed again. "And was that when you also learned that everything has to do with sex?"

His smile turned almost nostalgic. He hadn't thought of his first experiences in a long time. "I was young, yeah."

"I was fifteen."

"I was fourteen."

"Look at us."

"Yeah. But you haven't even seen half of what's out where," he said, emphasizing with splayed hands just how broad the universe was. "You haven't lived until you've been with an alien with tentacles. Now that's an experience worth filming."

"Jack!" she exclaimed, shocked, and he laughed. She was too adorable for words, in her innocence – in her passionate, beautiful, young innocence.

"I'll stick to humans, thanks..."

"The Doctor isn't human," he pointed out.

"Okay," she amended. "Humans and human look-alikes then. Although at the rate he's going, I can just say I'm sticking to humans."

His hand found her and he squeezed it.

"So, you had any experiences worth mentioning with humans? Or are you strictly into aliens? What's that, a… xenosexual?"

He grinned. "No, but that ought to be a word. Humans are great. Didn't discover aliens for a long time. But I was a poster boy; I was around lots of models. Of both genders."

Rose shook her head. "You're just impossible to pin down."

"You don't need definitions for everything, Rose." He caught her gaze. "No need for them at all, where I'm from. Sometimes it's just you, and me, and if the moment's right, nothing else matters."

A few moments' silence stretched between them, until Rose asked, "What do you think the Doctor's doing?"

He didn't know any better than she did. But he knew what he would have done in the Doctor's position... "The Doctor might be waiting for the curfew to be lifted."

"Right."

He had expected her to protest the idea, but the little smile on her lips told him everything.

He leaned in and kissed it off.

* * *

"So, old girl, think I should go and break those two out of jail?" the Doctor asked, running a hand along the console. The TARDIS murmured softly in affirmation.

"S'pose I've punished them enough, yeah."

He checked for his sonic screwdriver and psychic paper, two devices he anticipated using within the next hour. "Hey, might not have been their fault this time, but it was the last three times."

He grinned as he made his way down the ramp. "Always satisfying when you break someone out of a well-protected jail."

* * *

Rose's arms twined around Jack's neck as he pulled her onto his lap. His kisses were gentle at first: a soft touch, his fingers through her hair, a gentle parting to lick her lower lip.

She ran one hand through his hair and pressed another to his cheek, prompting him to deepen the kiss and explore the inside of her mouth more insistently. His hands on her waist, making their way up, made her shiver.

She felt his smile against her lips as he pulled her more closely to him. She could also feel his arousal, without mistake, and he moaned, deep in his throat as her body brushed against it.

Suddenly Rose needed more than just this – skin, and heat, and this moment.

She untangled her hand from Jack's hair and ran it down his torso, unbuttoning as she went and pulling his shirt out of the hem of his trousers when she reached them. She ran her hands up his newly-revealed stomach.

He hissed at her touch, breaking the kiss for just a moment, then coming back with even more heat.

This position was no good, Rose decided, standing up, and pulled him to his feet with her by the lapels of his shirt.

He broke the kiss. "Rose."

She ignored him, moving to kiss his neck instead.

He called her name again, then forced her to look up at him. "You sure about this?" Jack asked, a strain in his voice.

"Yes," she replied breathily, trying to return her lips to his, but he stopped her again.

"And the Doctor?" he continued, though how much he wished he hadn't had to ask this was obvious in the way he was gripping her waist and hips.

"The Doctor taught me that what's important is here and now and us," she said.

This was obviously good enough for Jack, as he pinned her to the wall.

* * *

The Doctor quietly watched a guard punch a code into a keypad beside the automated door into the prison facility: a large, white, and clinical building. He waited patiently until the doors slid open to admit him, and the closed.

When he was sure enough time had passed to allow the guard time to disappear from the front of the building, he crossed the street.

Ideally, he would not have planned to come marching into the building through the front doors, but when he had surveyed the building, he concluded that it was the only way in. There was an electric fence around it, and though he had disabled it with the screwdriver, it did not help the fact that the yard was large and filled with guards.

He crossed the street, charged the screwdriver, and pointed it at the keypad. The doors slid open quietly and obediently.

He didn't pocket it again, knowing that chances were he would need it again inside. He slid a hand into his pocket instinctively to check for the psychic paper, which lay where it should.

As he rounded a corner, a uniformed man raised his weapon.

"Hello," the Doctor said with a grin.

* * *

Jack cradled Rose against his chest, satisfied and panting. Her dress and most of his clothes lay forgotten on the bench and below it, while they lay on top of his RAF coat, which protected them from the cold tile of the floor.

"Good way to spend time in prison," she said breathlessly, recovering.

He laughed. "Yeah, it really is."

"Think the Doctor's getting close?"

Jack looked at his wrist computer. "It's past curfew. He'd better be."

She moaned and stretched. "Is it horrible to say that I don't want to get dressed and go yet?"

He planted a kiss on her hair and smiled. "Nothing wrong with a little afterglow." With one arm, he reached for her clothes and helped her back into her undergarments as she lazily allowed him to manipulate her body where he needed to.

"Better?" he asked when he was done, lying back and wrapping her in his arms again.

She opened her eyes and smiled again. "Yeah. A bit less embarrassing if the Doctor charges in here before we're fully dressed, this way."

Jack sincerely hoped that wouldn't happen. He had been getting on well with the Doctor in the past few months, and it could even be said that they had developed a friendship, but he could only imagine that the Time Lord wouldn't hesitate to leave him here if he found them in this position.

He had, however, grown closer to Rose. He'd been attracted to her from the beginning – heck, to both of them – yet he had never expected this to actually happen. It took all he had to stop himself from making a move on this amazing woman every time she lay against him watching a movie, or hugged him before bedtime.

He hugged her to him, planting another kiss on her forehead, before moving to reach for his clothes.

She protested, holding on to his arm as he made to stand, but let go. He dressed, hardly paying attention to what he was doing, unable to take his eyes off her; she had closed her eyes again and looked more beautiful than he'd thought she could.

When he was fully dressed, he stooped to scoop her into his arms. She squealed as he lifted her as if she were feather-light – he suddenly realised how small she was, and was amazed again at how much fire her petite body possessed.

She kissed him slowly, languidly, before he set her on her feet and helped her climb into her dress.

* * *

Aerith was another world with a seemingly rigid and structured rule, whose soldiers were pathetically easy to overpower, the Doctor mused, making his way down another corridor.

Behind him, other political prisoners were escaping their cells. This wasn't the rebellion that would change history, but it never hurt to shake up the government while freeing innocents.

Okay, he conceded eventually as he found the last door. He did have the advantage of being a well-equipped Time Lord.

He opened the lock and pushed the handle.

Jackpot. Jack and Rose had been sitting on a wooden bench, but leapt to their feet as soon as they'd seen him. Rose's arms were around his neck in seconds. "Doctor!"

Jack waited for Rose to get her hug before moving in to embrace him as well. "Thought you'd forgotten all about us, Doc," he said, grinning.

Amused, he took in the picture in front of him. Rose's untidy hair, impeccably done when they'd left the TARDIS – and more so, Jack's inside-out shirt, told him more than clearly enough about what had gone on while he had been waiting out the curfew.

"Me? Never! Just thought I'd teach you a lesson. Stop getting arrested." The Doctor grinned and led them out.

Humans. No self-control. And they were wonderful. And perhaps soon, he would teach them a thing or two about sharing.

-fin-


End file.
